Manual Of Hadith

Maulana Muhammad Ali

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136098901
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

For the western scholar of Islam, the great body of Arabic literature known as the Hadith has long been of outstanding interest and a subject of intensive study. Hadith, as a common noun, simply means talk, conversation but in the technical, religious sense it is used for the individual, reported sayings of the Prophet, his Companions, the first caliphs and others of the pious scholars of early Islam; and from this usage, it has become a generic term for the whole corpus of these sayings. The present book of Maulana Muhammad Ali contains 690 traditions, some three-quarters of them derived from al-Bukhart's Sahih and the rest from the other sunan and authoritative compilations.

CHAPTER IV

PURIFICATION

1. “And thy Lord do magnify, And thy garments do purify, And uncleanness do shun” (74 : 3–5).

2. “Surely Allāh loves those who turn to Him again and again, and He loves those who purify themselves” (2 : 222).

3. “Attend to your adornment at every time of prayer.” (7 : 31).

4. “O you who believe ! When you rise up to prayers, wash your faces and your hands as far as the elbows and wipe your hands and (wash) your feet to the ankles ; and if you are under an obligation to perform a total ablution, have a bath ; and if you are sick or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy, or you have had contact with women, and you cannot find water, betake yourselves to pure earth and wipe your faces and your hands therewith ; Allāh does not desire to put on you any difficulty but He wishes to purify you and that He may complete His favour to you, so that you may be thankful” (5 : 6).

Purification, though a necessary preliminary to prayer, is an independent subject and is dealt with as such in Ḥadīth collections. The first three quotations from the Holy Qur‘ān given above require in general terms that the man who would turn to his Lord should be pure in body and garments. The purification of the body is thus made a preliminary to prayer so that by external purification a man's attention may be directed to the purification of the soul which is aimed at in prayer. V. 4 gives the details of ablutions which are necessary before prayer. Purity of the body is thus required as a preliminary to the purity of mind, and the Muslim who is required to say prayers five times a day must needs keep himself and his clothes always clean.

It is true that an intelligent man should know for himself what cleanliness is, but religion aims at giving directions to men in all stages of civilization, in early states as well as in the more developed ones. Moreover, the masses among all people stand in need of minute details, and hence while the Holy Qur‘ān simply gives the general direction to keep oneself in a state of cleanliness, Ḥadīth gives the necessary details. As a matter of fact Islam directs attention to many details of personal cleanliness of which even the more civilized people are ignorant.

I have divided the chapter into five sections. The first deals with natural evacuations. Purification is called half the faith (ḥ. 1) and the key to prayer (ḥḥ. 2. 3), It must not be forgotten that purity of the body is a prelude to the purity of the soul (ḥ. 4). Full regard must be paid to personal cleanliness as well as public hygiene (ḥḥ. 5–13), Spitting in public places is forbidden (ḥḥ. 16, 17).

The second section deals with tooth-brushing which occupies a very prominent place in the Muslim's cleanliness. It is spoken of as a means of purifying the mouth and seeking the pleasure of the Lord (ḥ. 18), which is to show that God loves even bodily cleanliness. Great stress is laid upon its use (ḥḥ. 19, 20), and the minimum requirement is that the tooth-br...